Sarah Silverman: A Speck of Dust

I have loved much of Sarah's work in the past, but her newest special disappointed me. It deserves a 5 out of 10 because it was funny and witty about 50% of the time. The other 50% was a mixture of political talking points and misinformed scientific facts. I did laugh out loud a few times but the majority of jokes were poorly written, especially by her standards. I think I counted around 5 complex joke premises, all of which were very well executed, but the rest fell flat.

This was pretty much word for word the same as the show I saw. It was great the second time too! I don't get the negative reviews from Silverman's fans. There is still vulgarity. Maybe not enough for them? Maybe there is too much social commentary in the jokes. I think she is going in the right direction.

This isn't a review, just a comment on Silverman preparing a joke by mentioning the landing on Mars in 2012. Someone laughs in the audience and she makes a little remark on that. My nerdy theory: the guy who laughed at the wrong moment knew that we landed on Mars back in 1976, but Silverman made it sound like 2012 was the first time.

I'm a fan of Sarah Silverman. She's funny, knows how to make jokes about herself or/and her backgrounds, and she's not afraid of making fun of delicate subjects. I wouldn't say this was her best show but to me it was funny enough to be entertained and that's the only thing I want when watching a stand-up comedian. I'm not a big fan of the pausing she does alot. It looks too much like she's thinking about her lines and so it doesn't seem very natural to me. A little pause everynow and then is fine, to make a point, but with her it sometimes looks too forced and she doesn't need that. For the rest I think she has a good stage presence. Maybe she's not in my top of stand-up comedians but I still enjoy watching her.

Although very popular, Silverman is an acquired taste in terms of her style, her comedy, and her politics. I think too often she relies on the shock factor juxtaposed with her fresh-faced attractive appearance, but mostly she has a fine wit behind so much of what she does. With this show there was a decent mix of personal reflection combined with that same shock factor material. Although she has some digs at Trump, the show wisely stays away from political humor but mostly takes from her personal situation and memories of her family. In this way the show is quite interesting, although it perhaps reduces laughs at times.

Silverman seems a little different than I've seen her before. She felt very static and limited in her movements while on stage. In terms of her interaction with the audience, these also felt a little unnatural, and I wasn't always sure that it worked when she stopped her own show to look back at a line etc. In this way it was not a wholly successful show, and although I enjoyed it, I concede it was not as funny as I hoped, nor was Silverman as engaging.